The present invention relates to computer security, and deals more particularly with secure communications exchange over a communications network.
Transport Layer Security (“TLS”) and Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) are commonly-used security tools for incorporating authentication and encryption within client/server networks. TLS and SSL are networking protocols designed to be used in the Internet environment, which was not originally designed as a secure environment, and operate as a protocol layer above the TCP/IP (“Transmission Control Protocol”/“Internet Protocol”) layers. Application code then resides above TLS/SSL in the networking protocol stack. After an application (such as a browser) creates data to be sent to another entity in the network, the data is passed from the application layer to the TLS/SSL layer, where various security procedures are performed on it, and the TLS/SSL layer then passes the transformed data on to the TCP layer. On the receiver's side of the connection, after the TCP layer receives incoming data, it passes that data upward to the TLS/SSL layer, where procedures are performed to restore the data to its original form, and that restored data is then passed to the receiving application.